Terminally Guided Robots and Robotic Applications in Confined Spaces

This research will develop designs and new technologies needed for the first two critical system elements; (1) the robot system application and (2) drill end effector as defined in SBIR solicitation AF063C-011 entitled “Terminally Guided Robots and Robotic Application in Confined Spaces”. This work will extend the reach and accuracy to successfully drill inside highly contoured JSF/F-35 air inlet ducts. The primary objective is by using low cost commercially available pedestal robots to demonstrate the feasibility of achieving; (a) robot placement accuracy of 0.007” (b) drilled hole diameter accuracies of 0.0015” (c) counter sink diameter accuracies of 0.012” (d) minimal manual intervention (e) support a 20 hour ship set cycle time. Specific areas that will be studied in the robot application are: pose optimization, real-time collision detection, system layout, drill accessibility, interfaces and future enhancements, Specific areas in the drill effector that will be studied include packaging and validation of performance measures. PaR Systems (PaR) will leverage our extensive experience of fielding proven automation systems which have solved many of these similar problems in the production of larger complex aircraft components.